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by
Madisyn Taylor
When we find ourselves going through any kind of change in our
lives, our natural response may be to tense up on the physical, mental, or
emotional level. We may not even notice that we have braced ourselves against
a shift until we recognize the anxiety, mood swings, or general worried
feeling toward the unknown that usually results. There are positive ways to
move through change without pushing it away, however, or attempting to deny
that it is happening. Since change will occur in almost every aspect of our
lives, we can learn to make our response to it an affirmative one of
anticipation, welcoming the new while releasing the past with grace.
One thing we can do is change our perspective by changing the labels we use
to identify our feelings. We can reinterpret feelings of anxiety as the
anxious butterflies that come with eager expectation. With this shift, we
begin to look for the good that is on its way to us. Though we may only be
able to imagine the possibilities, when we acknowledge that good is there for
us to find, we focus our energy on joyful anticipation and bring it into our
experience while allowing the feelings to carry us forward.
We can also choose to do a ceremony to allow our emotions to process. Every
culture has created ceremonies to help people make the transition from one
phase of life to the next. We can always create a ceremony too, perhaps by
burning written thoughts to watch the smoke carry them away, thereby
releasing them, or we can welcome new endeavors by planting flowers or trees.
Some ceremonial activities such as a farewell send-off or housewarming party,
we may do automatically. Society also has built-in ceremonies, like
graduation and weddings, which may satisfy the need we feel. Sometimes the
shift from denial to acceptance is all that is needed to ease our anxiety,
allowing us to bring our memories with us as we move through nervousness to
joyful excitement about the good to come.
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